Why autism no eye contact

Autistic children are unaware of the social messages in their eyes, but actively avoid looking at someone else's eyes.

The findings of the research published in the American Journal of Psychiatry support one side of the ongoing debate over long periods of time: Does autistic children have a tendency to avoid looking at the eyes of others, because they find eye contact unpleasant or not interested in eye contact?

The reason Why autism no eye contact

This question was a long-standing controversial question about why eye contact is diminishing in autism situations, and it is also an extremely important question for understanding how to treat and treat. If autistic children do not like eye contact, treatments can be developed to reduce discomfort. However, if; eye contact is just an insignificant detail for children, parents and therapists; it can help children develop an insight into why eye contact is important for ordinary social interactions. This research can also be found in the conclusion that there is a need to focus more on social brain regions than brain regions responsible for fear and anxiety for scientists working on eye contact.

Missing eye contact is among the first signs of autism, and evaluations of eye contact are part of the autism screening and diagnostic methods. However, researchers are still debating the mechanism underlying this situation for a long time. The lack of interest hypothesis is also consistent with the advanced theory of social motivation, which suggests that a broad indifference to social knowledge constitutes the basis of autism. On the other hand, the anecdotes obtained from autistic individuals also indicate that autistic people find eye contact uncomfortable. The studies that follow their eye movements as people look at the faces support both hypotheses.

Autism and Eye Contact Relations

In the study, the first address of the research was children. This makes the researcher's observations of the origin of autistic eye-contact brains more powerful than previous studies. The research team tracked 38 children with normal development without autism diagnosis, 22 children with cognitive, language or movement developmental delays, and 26 children with autism. Using eye-tracking technology, researchers recorded eye movements as they watched videos of all 2-year-olds.

Initially, small blue and white rings were shown playing a bell on the screen to alert the children's attention. Later, as the child did not look at the public, an actress was shown at the site of the ring, and the woman in the video began to talk in a way that would attract the attention of the child. In some cases, the location of the ring was set to direct the child's gaze to the woman's eye in the video. In other cases, the location of the ring was arranged to direct the child's gaze to another area of ​​the woman's face on the screen, or to a child's room surrounded by colorful pictures and toys around the woman.
Unless the orientation of the ring was towards the woman's eyes, it was seen that the autistic children did not avoid eye contact, unlike the children in the other group. This finding suggests eye contact; it does not seem to be a nuisance for autistic children.

Conceptual Distinction between Autism and Eye Contact

In the rest of the video, it has been observed that "normal-development" children tend to look at the woman's eyes when the woman's voice and facial expressions emotionally attract the attention of the children. On the other hand, it was seen that when the women did not have emotional expressions, they sometimes tended to look at other points.

Autistic children were observed to have a tendency to look at a woman's eyes for a shorter period of time compared to "normal" children. However, it was seen that eye contact of autistic children did not show any variation depending on the emotional state of the woman.

Frederick Shic, assistant pediatrician from the University of Washington; observations made; he says that there is no behavior in which the discomfort is the subject, it is a totally disinterested gaze. On the other hand, the group in which the children with developmentally retarded children took a look similar to the "normal-development" children. This makes the difference between autistic children light.

Scientists say more work has to be done to understand that all autistic children show this kind of indifference braid. Moreover, autistic teenagers and adults often say that eye contact is an intense and unpleasant experience for them; for this reason, it may also be possible for children to develop indifference in the future.